stupid children die young

A couple is sueing YouTube because their teen-aged son died while filming a skateboard stunt to post on the internet video sharing service. It is reported that the teen was killed when he was holding the side of an SUV to accelerate to a high enough speed to be able to perform a dangerous trick and fell under the wheels of the vehicle, sustaining fatal injuries.

So, the parents of a child, who evidently never was taught to have the sense to not do something extremely dangerous by his parents, are blaming YouTube for their kid's death simply because other idiots have posted their own videos of foolish and needless demonstrations on YouTube.



YouTube should turn around and sue these abominable parents for letting their idiot son ride a skateboard.

I gotta get out more

Belated get-well wishes to Possummomma at "Atheist in a mini van," who is battling some challenging health problems. Read her at www.possummomma.blogspot.com, she has some wonderful insights and some truly exceptional children. Get better soon, P-mom!

framed

I'd like to propose that we begin a movement.

Every single time a "liberal/progressive/dirty fucking hippie" (or whatever my fellow members of the left-wing reality-based part of the United States call yourselves) mentions our national catastrophe in Iraq, we should always refer to it as "Bush's War."

Never call it anything else. Hang the moniker "Bush's War" around this miscreant simpleton's neck for eternity, so that in four hundred years children studying our time in school know that "Bush's War" was a horrible period in our nation's history and that "Bush" was the horrible person who got us there. Make him supplant Benedict Arnold as the traitor of cliche for millennia to come.



"Bush's War." May it last forever.


The phrase, not the war.

dumbasses

The usual rightwing suspects have been, in their Cartmanesque way, trying to start a fight between Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama based upon a quote that was deliberately mined from a speech Mrs. Obama gave several days ago. I had to search to find a copy of the full quote, because all of the conventional media only quoted misleading little nuggets of five or six words from the actual text.

So, here's the three full sentences before the sentence that has been so carefully mined that it wouldn't be safe to send a search party into, and the immediately subsequent sentence which is the source soundbite nuggets of this manufactured controversy. My own conclusion about whether this was aimed at Hillary Clinton or not follows.



"That one of the most important things that we need to know about the next President of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is he a good and decent person? So our view was that, if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House."





Are these people that stupid? Hillary Clinton is not a "he."

I'm not easily impressed, but...

Tonight's "Countdown" informed me of the heroic Ahmed Abdul Rahman, the world's most prolific male parent. Rahman is a one-legged man who has seventy-eight children born of fifteen different wives.


That's one hell of a leg.

this explains so much

When you are done laughing your ass off, if you have a blog, please repost this. If you don't, send it to all of your friends and tell them to pass it on. In other words, try to ensure every human being on this planet reads it.

http://www.bmezine.com/news/guest/20070818.html

Scary resemblance

If you're a Harry Potter fan, or even if you're not, the latest film "Order of the Phoenix" is a great adventure. If you see it at an IMAX theater you get a special thrill--20 minutes or so in 3D.

But what I really found amusing is the resemblance of one of the main characters (Delores Umbridge) to Laura Bush.

Maybe that is why the Christian right hate Potter so much. Or maybe the casting and staging and directing was planned...

Oh, dear, I'm not the only one who thinks so:
Laura Bush as Umbridge
. See, I am not just a nutter....

not quite

As is most recently and perhaps most notoriously demonstrated in a corrosive editorial by Philadelphia Daily News' editorial by Stu Bykofsky, a meaningful number of supporters of Bush's War actually hope for another massive terrorist attack on the United States, feeling that it would "sew us back together" as a nation and unite the country's citizens to mobilize against the brown hordes that so threaten our existence. Mr. Bykofsky wrote that it "will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail." I could point to numerous other examples of right-wingers pining for "another 9/11" to validate their fears and their insane militarism.

Stu and the others are almost right. They just got the wrong date. What we need is not another 9/11. What we need is another 5/4.


On May 4th, 1970, American National Guardsmen shot into a crowd of students demonstrating against the Viet Nam war at Kent State University in Ohio. Four American college students were killed, and nine American college students were wounded in this afternoon of horror and carnage when the forces of the American military were released upon American citizens exercising their right to assemble and to protest the actions of our representatives in government. Public outrage at this incident was a ripple that grew steadily until it was a wave of popular opinion that finally put an end to an unjust war of aggression initiated by the same types of wise foreign policy types that are represented by today's neocon cadre.



If we have to hope for some of our fellow countrymen getting killed in support of an ideology, then let's get them killed for the right one.

it's true

The iPhone is the coolest toy ever.

sorry, but

I've seen a lot of remarks on blogs and news reports the last couple of days that mention Karl Rove's failure to "build a permanent Republican majority" the way he promised he would.

Here's a news flash for you Republican folks. You got played.

The "boy genius" never gave a shit about a permanent nutcase majority, he just wanted to enlist your support in realizing his own hidden goals. You obliged, now he's done with you and he really doesn't care about your chances in the 2008 election cycle. He was George's boy, he did George's dirty work, and it all fed into his own plans for self-aggrandizement.



Makes you feel used, I hope. Not that you'll learn from the experience.

for what it's worth

http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

I came in somewhere around the Dalai Lama...

Legislator's Prayer

Our lobbyists who art in Washington,
Hallowed be your names.
Thy contributions come,
Thy will be done,
In Congress
As it seems like Heaven.

Give us our take
Our daily "bread,"
And fundeth our trespasses
As we fundeth those who
Trespass amongst us.

Lead us fast into temptation
And deliver us to weasels,
For thine is the income,
The Power and the Reelection,
Forever and ever

Amen

Rupert's idea of a joke?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118698747711695773.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

money well spent

So, Mitt won the Iowa straw poll. He distributed roughly six million dollars to garner forty-five hundred votes. That's about thirteen hundred dollars for each and every vote "Mister 31%" tallied under his name. You could probably buy people's votes outright for less than that. At that rate, he'd have to spend seventy billion dollars to become president.


Thanks for playing, Mitt. At least your kids managed to spend some time providing a patriotic service to our country.

times have changed

Allison Stewart, subbing for Keith Olbermann, just informed me that Mitt Romney "has over sixty volunteers paid to sing his praises around the state" of Iowa for the imminent caucus.


I guess volunteerism has gotten more lucrative than it was when I was young.

a pat on the head

Chris Matthews is all worked up about Hillary Clinton's "I'm your girl" comment at the recent debate. He was in the heat of one of his spittle-flecked rants on today's Hardball and said, "you know what this is like? This is like when Bill Clinton shook his finger and said 'I did not have sex with that woman.'"

Yeah, it's exactly like that, Chris. Both Bill and Hillary said the word "that" followed by an English general noun for "female human." It must be part of the Clinton conspiracy to rule the world. What more proof do you need?



Tweety, you will once again be granted the honor and privilege of genuflecting and kissing the ring of your monarch, Jack Welch. I hope it won't upset you too much if I tell you that for most of us, that activity usually involves a piece of jewelry.


Ha.

a little reality, please

After having seen this commercial a few times, all I can say is that if I were watching a slender, taut blonde in jeans that fit like spandex repeatedly bend over in front of me as she's packing a household appliance, the two words that would be going through my mind would not be "dish, drawer."


Maybe that's why I'm a musician instead of an engineer.

note to media morons

The term "seismic event" does not mean "natural occurrence." An underground nuclear test is a seismic event, too. This is really basic stuff. Don't they teach ANYTHING in school any more?

talk about lowered expectations

Thirty-three years ago today, Richard M. Nixon resigned from the presidency because he knew that he had worn out his welcome with the American people.



Even Nixon was smarter than Bush.

prison isn't good enough

Six years ago today, George W. Bush had his month-long vacation interrupted by having to read a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike inside the United States." He ignored it and went back to golfing and fishing. Six weeks later, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were hit by hijacked airliners, exactly as the Presidential Daily Briefing had indicated, despite the administration's chief officers' statements to the effect that "nobody could have anticipated" such an attack.

Ever since then, the citizens of this country have been told by our C-minus president that WE weren't taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough.


This is OUR country, Mr. Bush. It is time for you to face the consequences of your abysmal failure. May I live long enough to see the ignominy which is your ultimate fate. I'm certain that ultimately, in the history of the United States, Benedict Arnold will be replaced as the American traitor of record by George W. Bush.